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Federal, state and local government technology workers give government digital strategy middling grades, according to two recent surveys sponsored by Acquia together with the Center for Digital Government. Acquia is a provider of Drupal based open source and cloud platform services, and asked technology workers about their existing digital plans and how they could improve.

Not surprisingly, state and local respondents cited budget constraints, legacy systems, and an overall uncertainty about enterprise vision as the core inhibitors to moving digital strategy forward. Data security also ranked near the top of the list in terms of priorities for any digital effort.

35% of state and local respondents cited “becoming more information centric” as the main area of improvement for digital, with security, becoming customer centric, and building shared platforms following closely behind. The overall grade from state and local respondents for digital was a “B-” with “becoming customer centric” cited as the area most in need of improvement.

On the federal side, less progress has been made despite the Obama Administration’s directive – the Digital Government Strategy. On average, federal respondents give their agencies a ‘C+’ grade in digital strategy efforts. Only 11 percent of respondents rate their agency’s efforts as excellent, whereas 35 percent describe efforts as either unsatisfactory or poor, according to the report. Federal technology workers overwhelmingly say that compliance with federal mandates is the reason for any progress at all, with cost efficiency coming in at a close second and innovation coming in dead last.

Barriers to improvement on the federal level are somewhat similar to those cited by state and local respondents – limited budget (63 percent), skills gaps (52 percent), and legacy systems (50 percent). Federal survey data shows that despite the Shared Platforms directive, few agencies are engaged in cross-collaboration or resource sharing.

When it comes to making upgrades or implementing new technologies, the task can often be daunting. Both federal, state and local workers in both surveys say that maintaining that type of commitment over time is a tall order in government, both from a resources and budget perspective.

Acquia most recently updated government websites for both New York state and Los Angeles. The New York project required more than 100 workers and 10 months to complete. The website remained more or less the same for 15 years, and basically required a full rebuild. Acquia was tasked with not only updating the site but making it responsive for both handicapped users and a variety of devices.

“What you had with the New York site was something that worked, but didn’t provide information in the easiest or best possible way,” explained Todd Akers, VP of Public Sector at Acquia in an interview with CivSource. “This is common to a lot of government websites, and it requires a culture shift in how information is presented, with the tools that are available today government can do much more than it could in the past.”

The changes in the New York site are readily apparent – graphics and navigation are more modern, and information is more digestible. So far the state has seen a bump in site visits as well, suggesting users are better able to navigate to the information they need.

For the Los Angeles project, Akers explains that officials want to migrate more than 20 sites to Drupal and overhaul the total customer experience with government online. The Los Angeles Information Technology Agency (ITA) is working with Acquia to start a phased in migration with three of the city’s most visited sites: lacity.org, lacityview.org and ladot.lacity.org.

“Almost 4 million people depend on our web presence to access important city services and information,” said Ted Ross, Assistant General Manager for Technology Solutions for the City of LA.

Services included in the migration will be tax and property data, motor vehicle services, transportation, and GIS applications. Prior to selecting Drupal, Los Angeles managed its sites with a legacy Oracle Stellent CMS. The city sought greater resiliency to support its sites and increasing the number of online services they offer.

Acquia, a provider of a content management system (CMS) based on the open source Drupal project that is delivered as a service, has added a Cloud Shield virtual private network (VPN) designed to isolate access to applications running on the software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform.

Chris Stone, senior vice president of products and development at Acquia, says that as the CMS has evolved, IT organizations are not only building and deploying applications on top of Acquia, they are increasingly skipping the whole process of contracting individual cloud and networking services in favor of having Acquia perform those functions on their behalf.

As cloud computing becomes more complex, Stone says that many IT organizations have begun to realize that SaaS applications can essentially double as platform-as-a-service (PaaS) environments where IT organizations can not only deploy applications, but eliminate many of the headaches associated with setting up cloud infrastructure on their own.

In addition, Stone notes that in the case of Acquia, many of the burdens associated with complying with any number of regulations are taken on by the SaaS application provider.

Federal agencies "will be hard pressed to keep pace with technology if they fail to modernize their processes and policies," said Deloitte Digital's Tim Young. "Business and IT leaders at agencies need to partner together to design 21st century government. A digitally native experience can create more efficient government, more engaged constituents, and more effective programs."

The explosion in the use of mobile devices in the United States is posing a major challenge for the federal government to provide public access to agencies via wireless channels. In an effort to keep pace with technology, the U.S. government launched the Digital Government Strategy in May 2012 with the goal of providing citizen access to federal services and information anywhere, anytime, on any device.

The performance of federal agencies in meeting the goals of the strategy has been mixed. The federal General Accountability Office recently reported on the progress of federal agency actions in responding to mobile device and digital technology issues. GAO focused on a sampling of six federal agencies, and cautioned that its investigation should not be generalized as a definitive report card on the entire federal government. Still, the sampling indicated that agency performance was uneven.

The GAO's report, issued in December 2014, followed a second Obama administration initiative in which the government recognized that federal agencies needed a lot more help in meeting the fast-developing digital technology demands of the U.S. public.

In the follow-up program, launched in August 2014, the White House created the U.S. Digital Service as a resource for federal agencies.

"The Digital Service will be a small team made up of our country's brightest digital talent that will work with agencies to remove barriers to exceptional service delivery and help remake the digital experience that people and businesses have with their government," said Beth Cobert, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget.

Agencies Chip Away at Improvements

On the plus side, the GAO reported that all 24 agencies that were required to meet a number of digital strategy goals have accomplished the task of identifying two or more services to be optimized for mobile use. Additionally, 21 agencies already have optimized two or more prioritized services. Specific examples of performance:

- The Federal Emergency Management Agency: FEMA incorporated "responsive design" as part of its migration to a content management system for its DisasterAssistance.gov website, to make it easier for disaster survivors to apply for assistance online using mobile devices. Having ready access to the portal via a mobile device is crucial for those affected by a disaster, especially in the event of extensive power outages. FEMA also has a smartphone app available for Apple, Android and Blackberry devices.
- The U.S. Department of Transportation: DoT also incorporated a responsive design when it modified its main departmental website, which included transitioning to a content management system. DoT got an early jump, and went live with the change in September 2012, utilizing a more streamlined approach to facilitate mobile access.
- Better Apps: The federal strategy involves more than just redesigning websites to mesh with mobile devices. For example, agencies are encouraged to explore the use of native apps as a convenience to citizens. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration now offers its SaferCar app, which allows individuals to check for vehicle ratings and vehicle safety defects, as well as locate child car seat inspection stations. The app works with Apple and Android platforms. Also, the National Park Service developed an app for the National Mall and Memorial Sites, which provides tourists with information about historical and cultural sites in Washington, D.C.

The GAO also reported that the federal government still faces huge challenges before it can come close to Amazon or Google in terms of digital capabilities. Some of those barriers:

- Information Overload: Government sites filled with a lot of statistics, verbiage, regulations and directions are not helpful for electronic access in general, and especially with mobile devices. Occupying valuable website space with unnecessary information or clutter can be a major impediment, GAO noted.
- Navigation: Unnecessary screens and functions prevent consumers from finding the information or services they need within three clicks, GAO said. A related issue is the difficulty of managing several screens. Toggling between multiple screens on a government website, especially when dealing with forms or applications, is more challenging on a smartphone than on a desktop or laptop. In addition, there is the mind-boggling presence of the government on the Internet, with 11,000 federal websites subject to digital modernization.

The digital strategy addresses other operational issues. In the process of identifying services for digital access, agencies were directed to be compliant with new open data, content, and application programming interface policies, as well as metadata tagging. To ensure that improvements are in tune with public expectations, OMB required that agencies implement performance and customer satisfaction measuring tools on all government websites.

The View From Outside

Given the formidable tasks involved in complying with the goals of the digital program, the modest level of agency performance to date is understandable, noted Todd Akers, vice president public sector at Acquia.

"In the few short years since the Digital Government Strategy was released, agencies have made tremendous strides in both understanding how citizens consume and use information, and adopting new technologies like the Drupal open source Web content management system to securely deliver mission-essential information," he told the E-Commerce Times.

"The White House digital strategy set out a great road map and set a great example of how to execute as well. Change doesn't happen overnight, but it is happening, in many cases, faster than expected, considering the challenges agencies must overcome," he said.

Acquia collaborated with the Government Business Council in a 2014 assessment of federal digital and mobile technology performance.

Your business website is not perfect. No matter how much you love it and think it represents your brand, there are people out there who hate it. It could be difficult to navigate. It could have annoying features. Or it could be something really trivial that just rubs users the wrong way. But whatever the reason, your goal should be to have your website bother as few people as possible.

While you certainly can’t please everyone, there are a few pretty common things that can annoy or anger online customers. Avoiding these pitfalls can go a long way toward getting more customers to actually like and appreciate your website. They could be simple issues that you have just overlooked.

Tom Wentworth, chief marketing officer at Acquia, recently outlined some of these common issues in a post on Mashable. One of the issues he mentions is slow load times. If a website takes more than a few seconds to load, many customers get annoyed and some even leave the site altogether.

After 10 months and hundreds of hours, New York state offers insights into what made its newest website a major success.

In 2013, the New York state website had lapsed into disrepair. For 15 years it was left relatively stagnant. Upkeep relegated to maintenance. Navigation tangled in rambling menus and redundant links, and was garbed in a coat of drab navy coloring. The website struggled to direct visitors to the state’s many agencies and battled with juggling a multiplicity of citizen-focused interactions.

As such, a key priority was to lay the old design to rest and revitalize the site with fresh functionality and a modern look. It’s one of the reasons Gov. Andrew Cuomo hired Rachel Haot, the state’s first deputy secretary for technology, in January of 2014. Cuomo sought a platform equipped to curate the site’s more than 3.7 million page views per month on NY.gov and more than 5.6 million annual page views on its popular Governor.ny.gov — a site dedicated to Cuomo’s activities and initiatives.

Already NY.gov shows significant returns: Visitor counts taken in its first month, from Nov. 12 to Dec.12, 2014, compared to 2013 show that unique visits increased from 244,597 in 2013 to 605,063 in 2014. Similarly, page views saw a bump from 313,170 in 2013 to 1.1 million in 2014. Within the governor’s site, unique visits increased from 213,963 to 347,023. Cuomo’s page views also rose by about 17.3 percent, boosting from 471,414 in 2013 to 553,085 post launch.

Taking time to flesh out details behind the near year-long project, Haot identified notable features and underscored three lessons learned.

1. IF IT’S BROKEN, KNOW SPECIFICS
Considering the site went 15 years without a major tune-up, it didn’t take a technologist to figure the site needed a fix. However, “fixing a website” is too broad a project description for meaningful change. Specifics were required. To bridge this gap, Haot said a collaborative assessment was made to review site analytics — to determine feature demand — and open doors for user testing and stakeholder input. What the team discovered was a clear need for a responsive design, one to accommodate mobile devices; shaving excessive information for quick access to services; engagement outlets through social media; and personalization.

“We really identified that the primary goals of the website were first to serve and perform all of those functions, and then secondly, to inform and explain government,” Haot said.

Other obscure yet critical improvements dealt with the American with Disabilities Act requirements and tailoring the site for the state’s diverse demographics. Pages had to be translated for non-English speaking residents — 70 languages total — and text contrast and size adjusted for the visually impaired. Last, Acquia was chosen as the tech firm to build the site with its open source content management system, Drupal, to eliminate laborious coding each time new content was added.

Marc Andreessen famously said that “software is eating the world.” While I certainly agree with Marc that software companies are redefining our economies, I believe that much of that technological shift is being driven by data. So, is the value of a business in the data, or in the software? I believe the value is increasingly more in the data, and not the software. Let’s investigate why:

Data-driven experiences
Netflix provides a great example of a data-driven, customer-centric company. By introducing streaming video, its software “ate” the traditional DVD business. But Netflix soon realized that its future wasn’t in the medium of delivery — it was in the wealth of data generated simply by people using the service. The day-to-day data generated by Netflix viewers provides a crucial ingredient to competing in the marketplace and defining the company’s mission: Improving the quality of the service.

To that end, Netflix uses passive data — the information gathered quietly in the background without disrupting users’ natural behaviors — to provide TV and movie recommendations, as well as to optimize the quality of services, such as streaming speed, playback quality, subtitles or closed captioning. Of course, Netflix subscribers can contribute active feedback to the company, such as movie reviews or feedback on the accuracy of a translation, but the true value of Netflix’s data is in the quiet, zero-effort observation that allows the company to optimize experiences with no friction or disruption to regular user behavior. In fact, the company even hosted several competitions to invent better algorithms for user ratings, with a winning prize of $1 million.

Digital marketers: 2015 is here, and it’s time to play catch up. For the past 10 years, we’ve been trying to keep pace with the latest innovations, strategizing and re-strategizing to implement the next great personalization feature or web design technique. But that period of innovation has ended and, moving into 2015, we find ourselves in a new period of digital transformation. By fully implementing these innovations in the coming year, marketers can help companies transition into fully digital-first business.

Where should we start? Mobile.

On Cyber Monday, we saw an increase in sales via mobile devices — with almost a quarter of all sales stemming from mobile. Tablets continued to bring in more sales than smartphones, but what was interesting was that more consumers are browsing the web via smartphones than tablets. In fact, the amount of web traffic coming from mobile phones is twice the amount coming from tablets.

So why the disconnect? Why are so many more consumers browsing via mobile but not completing purchases?

Designing for Mobile

The first place to look is the design of mobile websites. We’ve come a long way in terms of designing for mobile, but responsive design is no longer a differentiator — it’s an expectation. Responsive design ensures a uniform brand experience across devices, but marketers need to go one step further and cater to how consumers want to interact with a site on specific devices. It’s important to design around consumer motivations to fully tap into opportunities on mobile.

A group of local CEOs held a rather quiet meeting back in September. The invite-only conclave included the chief executives of public companies like iRobot, Constant Contact, and LogMeIn, as well as fast-growing startups like Fiksu, Formlabs, and Acquia. Governor Deval Patrick and Greg Bialecki, the secretary of housing and economic development, even showed up. The focus? How to help those startups grow into big successes.

The event was called the MassScale CEO Roundtable, and it took place at the offices of Communispace in Boston. (Communispace chairwoman Diane Hessan, now CEO of the Startup Institute, was among the attendees.) Scott Savitz of Data Point Capital, one of the prime movers behind the event, tells me that this was the second gathering. The first roundtable took place earlier in 2014 at LogMeIn, and the Mass Tech Hub Collaborative has been helping to organize the gatherings, along with people like Savitz; Andy Ory, former CEO of Acme Packet; Michael Greeley of the VC firm Foundation Medical; and iRobot CEO Colin Angle.

The sole purpose of MassScale is to focus on scaling startups into anchor companies — our next generation of EMCs, Akamais, and Wayfairs. According to a press release put out about Governor Patrick’s participation in the September meeting, “This industry dialogue begins to foster a culture that values and celebrates the scale-up of tech companies, and helps identify ways the state can support the conditions for their growth.” The group plans to continue meeting in 2015, though the next date hasn’t been set.

“The ultimate goal is to find ways to catalyze a culture for ‘scale-up’ in Massachusetts that is analogous to what already exists for ‘start-up,'” says Pamela Goldberg, CEO of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, which is supporting the initiative.

From recent conversations with marketing and digital directors at blue chip brands, it’s clear that big data, open source, content marketing, personalisation and online communities are just a few of the trends that are high on the agenda for 2015.

A good content management system (CMS) will allow marketers to develop and deploy innovative digital campaigns and initiatives, giving them flexibility and power to improve the effectiveness of their marketing.

But all too often we meet companies who are struggling with just the opposite.

The content management system has become an obstacle to getting the job done.

Too much energy goes into finding ways around content management systems that have failed to keep pace with the needs of the contemporary marketer.

So how can you avoid these issues? The first step is to make sure that in the crowded world of content management systems you choose the one that best meets the needs of your business.

At Deeson we specialise in the open source Drupal CMS that’s built specifically for managing online content, communities and commerce.

As a marketer I know that Drupal has a lot to offer marketers in 2015, so here are my top five reasons why Drupal can really help you build and deliver marketing campaigns:

Integration with social media
We all know that the right social media can be a great platform for reaching your audience. We work with Robbie Williams and his management team to develop and run Robbie’s official website.

The site is designed with social content at its core, featuring heavyweight social integrations to give a seamless cross-channel experience for Robbie’s fans.

Using Drupal we’ve made sure it’s resilient to the traffic spikes that are inevitable on a website for a global pop legend.

Targeted to the right audience
Another very clever thing that we can do with Drupal is to flexibly personalise the content of a website according to the users visiting the site regardless of whether a user is logged in.

We live in a world where technology is an all-encompassing constant, promising us a simpler, easier life. We now supposedly have whatever we want at our fingertips, instantly accessible, 24 hours a day. However, technology often fails to deliver on the hassle-free experience that is promised, slowing us down and forcing us to adapt how we work and live to the limitations of the technology rather than the technology adapting to us.

Marketers want to be able to create appealing, interesting content and drive customer engagement without technology dictating how this happens. If the technology used is too clunky and process driven then it makes completing any task harder and can actually prevent us from reacting quickly to new opportunities and market demands. If we can’t easily see and analyse the success, or otherwise, of a campaign then planning for future work becomes increasingly difficult.

New York state has revamped its long-outdated website, ny.gov, with an emphasis on color, big numbers and Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Last year, ny.gov and the governor’s website had 7 million page views, officials say. About 20% of traffic to the sites were through mobile devices. But the old site hadn’t been updated in 15 years and featured a drab dark navy background and overly-long menus for visitors to comb through.

The Cuomo administration appointed Rachel Haot as deputy secretary of technology in January, with the task of redesigning the neglected website and modernizing government access to state services. Ms. Haot had team of more than 100 people working on the website redesign over 10 months, she said.

The new ny.gov is an open source website that uses Drupal software and an Acquia cloud host, officials said. Code and Theory, a digital design agency that has led projects for Dr Pepper and Vogue, was a partner in the design, among others.

The guiding principle of the new ny.gov was to “put people first,” Ms. Haot said on Wednesday, shortly before the site’s launch at noon. “Customer service is our primary goal.”

The new site utilizes responsive web design; no matter the size of the screen, the page’s content adjusts to the size of the screen to make it mobile-friendly.

With the old site, Ms. Haot said, “there wasn’t really a clear direction to the user, ‘here is where you start.’ Everything kind of competed for your attention without actually giving you a clear options for where to move forward.”

A massive revamp of the federal government’s online presence is expected to pit proprietary software giants against a growing number of open-source competitors.

The Government of Canada is currently under construction — or at least, its website is.

Last year, in an effort to consolidate the more than 1,500 federally owned URLs spanning some 100 departments, the Treasury Board announced it would be revamping the government’s web presence by limiting and standardizing the platforms and tools used to power its websites.

Now, we have Canada.ca – but not completely. The government debuted a prototype of the new website last December. With only a small percentage of its web pages moved over to the new address, it’s really a teaser of what’s to come. Most links still lead to existing departmental pages, but the point is to eventually eliminate the multitudinous gc.ca addresses and instead nestle them all under Canada.ca over the next four years.

First, they’ll have to pick a content management system (CMS) provider to carry out the task.

The government put out a request for information on Aug. 1 to gather information about what potential suppliers are able and unable to provide, whether there’s anything the government missed in its plan and whether companies would respond to a future request for proposals (RFP).

Multiple vendors responded to the request for information, and the department is now in the process of aggregating and analyzing it ahead of a full RFP, expected to come in the next few months.

The process is expected to draw proposals from tech giants such as Adobe and Oracle, but several smaller companies operating on an open-source content management platform called Drupal are hoping they can undercut the proprietary bidders.

FOREIGN ADOPTION
Unlike proprietary software, which is created and developed by a limited and relatively small team of programmers, open-source software is redistributed and constantly improved upon by a vast community of programmers who use the software under a free license.

Drupal is an open-source framework used as the back- end for roughly seven per cent of websites worldwide (the third most popular behind WordPress and Joomla), according to Open Source CMS.

It’s also become the CMS of choice for many of the world’s government organizations, powering the websites of the White House, the Government of Ontario, the City of Ottawa, and a smattering of outgoing gc.ca addresses.

“It’s hard today to argue that Drupal is not the de facto standard worldwide for government websites,” said Mathieu Weber, the Canadian director of Acquia, a Drupal software-as-a-service provider.

In September, the Australian government announced that it had chosen Acquia to handle a consolidation process very similar to Canada’s current project. The United Kingdom also went open source in 2012 with the consolidated gov.uk website.

Those in the local open-source sector have their fingers crossed that the Canadian federal government will officially join the Drupal ranks.

“If it’s not enough that it’s free, and ( that) it’s more leading- edge than proprietary, then at least we can say that all our neighbours are doing it,” said Chris Smith, chief executive officer of OPIN, an Ottawa-based enterprise content management systems provider that Mr. Smith said partnered with “one of the larger system integrators” and a support company to respond to the RFI this summer.

LAYING THE GROUNDWORK
When the federal Treasury Board announced the government’s web consolidation plans last year, Acquia said it was prepared to lead the opensource community when the government asked for proposals.

Acquia submitted a response to the RFI, provided input on a draft RFP, and “remains actively involved with the national Drupal community in anticipation of the final RFP,” said Mr. Weber.

The Massachusetts-based company hasn’t been banging on Canada’s door every day, but the company has been steadily pushing Drupal locally and internationally.

“Acquia has invested selectively in a handful of markets where there’s a huge opportunity to leapfrog,” said Mr. Weber. “Canada is one of those countries.”

There are about a half- dozen Drupal-based companies in Ottawa alone. The community is strong, with regularly occurring events such as the annual DrupalCamp Ottawa, largely sponsored by Acquia, and the monthly DrupalYOW meetups.

Programmers cite a number of benefits, and some drawbacks, of running on Drupal and other open-source software. One of the main advantages is that problems have an easy fix, according to Steven Muegge, a professor with Carleton University’s technology innovation management program.

“All software has defects when it’s first written,” said Mr. Muegge. “When the source is available, it’s easier to detect those defects and do something about them. Others from the community can propose patches to correct those, and they get fixed faster.”

Open-source systems also mean there’s less lock-in to any particular vendor, he said. Mr. Weber added that a Drupal-based solution is “bar none the most secure and has the most eyes watching it,” to help avoid government web security crises. Perhaps above all else is the cost savings and local economy boost that come with open source.

“As a taxpayer, I very much want my government to be building systems on top of open source software,” said Mr. Muegge. “I believe it’s good for economic development, it opens the business up to smaller companies and entrepreneurs, and that’s a very important source for innovation in our economy.”

PROPRIETARY PULL
Drupal detractors tend to cite a steep learning curve, a lack of “backward compatibility” – the ability of a modern system to read files generated by its predecessors – and some potential usability headaches dependent upon one’s needs and specs, such as memory usage and coding type.

Those in favour of proprietary CMS argue that developers and managers whose jobs and revenues depend on the program are more accountable than open-source users in terms of consumer satisfaction, and that an open source CMS isn’t as worry-free as its proponents claim.

Shawn Cruise, vice-president of Adobe Systems Canada’s public sector, said in an e-mailed statement that “organizations should choose the technology that best fits their specific needs,” and that its proprietary CMS solution offers “the best choice for customers in both public and private sectors for web experience management, helping them control costs while keeping focus on their core business and mission.” Adobe did not indicate whether the company would be submitting a proposal for Canada.ca.

Asked whether Public Works and Government Services Canada, the contracting authority for the RFP, will be looking into an open source framework for the new website, a spokesperson said in an e-mailed statement that the Government of Canada will “consider all viable options.” The government won’t divulge information about vendors, but sources say both open-source and proprietary providers have responded to the request for information.
According to open-source developers, the future at Canada.ca looks good for them.

“The odds are pretty high, based on the way that other governments have realized the cost benefit,” said Mr. Smith. “I think if our government were to choose proprietary, it would be a surprise.”

Drupal’s free and open-source content management framework powers 2.1 per cent of all websites and is also making its mark in the travel industry. While 2.1 per cent of the web, or roughly 1,015,000 sites, may seem like a very tiny slice of total global websites, Drupal’s trusted and secure back-end framework as well as its rock-solid PHP codebase has made it the de facto choice of websites that need the optimum in security in stability.

WhiteHouse.gov and data.gov.uk are just some of the high-profile websites that have placed their trust in Drupal and this is catching on with travel and airport websites that require rock-solid stability as well as a high-degree of customization.

Drupal runs on any computing platform that supports both a Web server capable of running PHP (including Apache, IIS, Lighttpd, Hiawatha, Cherokee or Nginx) and a database (such as MySQL, MongoDB, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, SQLite, or Microsoft SQL Server) to store content and settings. Drupal has an installed base of 30,000 developers and a thriving user-supported community.

It is a viable option for companies moving away from costly and convoluted proprietary CMS (Content Management System) into something that’s way more flexible and easy to deploy and manage. Flight Centre and Aéroports de Montreal both invested in Drupal to facilitate their massive database driven and connected systems which rely on split second processes and a high-degree of accuracy and reliability for managing vast airline, flight and traveller information.

Aéroports de Montréal serves an average of 14 million passengers yearly coming in and out of Montreal through its two international airports, Montréal–Trudeau and Montréal-Mirabel.

But when it came to welcoming and guiding visitors through the world-class city, the airport’s website was sorely lacking and didn’t show travelers all that was available to them, beginning at the airport.

The existing site’s performance was unreliable, with frequent outages during high-traffic events like snowstorms – when passengers most needed up-to-date travel information. The user experience was unintuitive and limited, and mobile access was stymied by outdated infrastructure. And the legacy CMS and unreliable host prevented developers from managing content as efficiently as they could.

Using the flexibility of Drupal, Nurun, a global consultancy firm, and Acquia, a leading software-as-a-service company, were able to help Aéroports de Montréal build a site that better connects passengers with the airport – and with the entire city of Montreal.

Offering more engaging experiences that cut down the stress of preparing for travel – from commerce to real-time flight information – travelers can now connect seamlessly with all the content they need from the airport. Passengers can access security procedure information, interactive maps, parking details and more from any browser, including mobile devices.

Dries Buytaert is a passionate believer in what he calls "the open-source way."

For Buytaert, the co-founder and CTO of Acquia in Burlington, and president of the Drupal Foundation — meant to expand use of the open-source platform he began to create at the age of 19 — the ripple effects of embracing open collaboration go well beyond business and government applications of technology.

"The collaboration of open-source communities has the power to raise the bar for all participants," said Buytaert. "The innovation that's generated by contributors can be widely shared and enjoyed, particularly for those who would otherwise be at a disadvantage. With Drupal, the same technology that's powering customer experiences for Global 2000 organizations is readily available for the next great startup. And emerging nations benefit from the innovation of more than 130 countries that use Drupal for their government sites."

WhiteHouse.gov and many of the busiest government websites globally have been built on the Drupal platform, and Buytaert's evangelism has led thousands of developers worldwide to help create new ways of managing and displaying content using the technology. Currently, he's helping to steer work on Drupal 8, which will leverage new technologies for mobile data display and other updates to "set a new standard for ease of use."

These once-ubiquitous agreements may be hurting both companies and employees more than they're helping. Here's what works instead.

Thomas Erickson had never really given much thought to employee non-compete agreements.

But recently, the CEO of the Burlington, Massachusetts-based software company Acquia, Inc., says he's been getting some push-back from new hires who weren’t happy signing contracts that restrict them from working for competitors or within the same industry after they leave their jobs.

After a few conversations with his human resources department, Erickson spoke with his executive team and abolished employee non-competes at the company for all but a few senior executives. Out of Acquia’s more than 500 employees, roughly five or six are still bound by their non-compete agreements, he says.

At the same time, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick was challenging longstanding non-compete legislation in the state. In late July 2014, after heated debate, the Massachusetts legislature failed to pass new legislation vastly limiting these agreements. But Erickson and groups like the New England Venture Capital Association are still trying to make the case that they’re obsolete and bad for business.

“There are cases where technical teams have worked for very poorly-run companies, going the wrong direction. They build up a lifetime of expertise, but when they leave the company, they’ve been prevented from using that expertise and have to change their line of work and take salary cuts,” Erickson says.

ARE EMPLOYEE NONCOMPETES OBSOLETE?
While Governor Patrick’s push to ban most non-competes grabbed headlines, there isn’t exactly a national rush to get rid of them. California bans non-compete agreements, except in some very specific circumstances. A handful of states, such as Florida, Virginia, and Washington, specifically prohibit overly broad non-competes.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — September 29, 2014 —Phase2, a digital technology agency delivering integrated web products for content management, collaboration and interactive experiences across the public, private and non-profit sectors, is launching OpenPublic 1.0, a Drupal-based content management system (CMS) tailored to open government initiatives. An evolved approach to open source CMS, OpenPublic 1.0 packages government-focused functionality in a secure, intuitive App-based Drupal distribution. Phase2 is partnering with Acquia to deliver a secure, cloud development platform for OpenPublic packages.

OpenPublic 1.0 breaks the mold of government CMS by encapsulating all functionality in a clean collection of Apps, simplifying all of the distribution’s powerful out-of-the-box functionality. By using Acquia’s open cloud platform, OpenPublic enables US government agencies to achieve and sustain compliance with the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA).

“Technologies like Drupal have enabled governments to become more open by sharing greater volumes of content online. The next step is to utilize it to spur citizen engagement and provide improved digital experiences.” said Jeff Walpole, CEO of Phase2. “OpenPublic 1.0 is an excellent example of an open source solution that facilitates this engagement without compromising security, accessibility, and flexibility.”

OpenPublic was specifically designed to easily and efficiently deploy a web presence across multiple agency sites. San Mateo County, for example, uses OpenPublic to support a streamlined platform of more than twenty departmental websites, each with different content needs and functionality requirements. Flexibility and administrative control is crucial.

“OpenPublic allowed the County to maintain a strong central brand while meeting user demand for autonomy and flexibility,” said Beverly Thames, Content and Collaboration Manager for San Mateo County. “County leadership could only be convinced to adopt open source if they were assured the system was secure and accessible, OpenPublic delivered both.”

“Open source, community-driven solutions like OpenPublic are leading the way to government transparency,” said Dries Buytaert, CTO of Acquia and creator of Drupal. “They help agencies and organizations improve efficiency and increase sharing of information while making government content more accessible.”

About Phase2
Phase2 is one of the most trusted digital agencies focused on open technology. Organizations like the Department of Energy, Red Hat, Harvard Business School, NBCUniversal and the Robin Hood Foundation use Phase2’s integrated web products and systems to transform the way their users experience content and their teams work together. Founded in 2001, Phase2 designs and builds the world’s most powerful content systems, collaboration solutions, and interactive experiences. Phase2 is headquartered in Alexandria, VA, and has offices in New York, San Francisco, and Portland. For more about Phase2, visit http://www.phase2technology.com.

About Acquia
Acquia is the digital business company. The Bay Area Rapid Transit District, the State of Georgia, Pinterest and Stanford University are among the more than 4,000 organizations that are transforming their digital businesses with Acquia’s open platform for integrated digital experiences. Global 2000 enterprises, government agencies and NGOs rely on Acquia to create new revenue streams, lower costs, and engage audiences more deeply through content, community, commerce and context.

Dries Buytaert built what would become the open source software Drupal in his dorm room at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. What started as an experiment to build an intranet message board for his friends eventually turned into the open source software behind Drupal, and launched in 2001.

Drupal quickly grew, now boasts more than one million participants in its open source community online. In addition to a spike in individual users, Buytaert began to see an uptick in Drupal adoption by big businesses and large nonprofit organizations.

While working on his research dissertation, Buytaert began providing support to companies that had adopted the Drupal software. He recalled one particular evening when, after he was approached by a company in the UK for help, he spent the entire night working to resolve the issues it was having.

"That was my ah-ha moment," Buytaert said. "I realized there was a big opportunity to help organizations accelerate their adoption of Drupal and be successful."

Buytaert founded Acquia with Jay Batson in 2007 after the pair were introduced by Michael Skok, a partner at North Bridge Venture Networks. Acquia provides enterprise products, services, and support for Drupal, with the goal of accelerating Drupal adoption among enterprise users. Currently, Acquia works with brands such as Pinterest, Mercedes Benz, Warner Music Group, and Stanford University.

Along with businesses and nonprofits, governmental sites now run on Drupal too. The official White House site has a Drupal initiative, and Acquia published a case study on data.gov.uk, an open data project started by the UK government.

While some enterprises are hesitant to embrace open source, Buytaert believes that the collaborative software development it provides is what has kept Acquia innovative. His hope is that Acquia can be a role model for entrepreneurs with similar aspirations.

The product set
Acquia's product set aims help enterprises successfully use Drupal. The company's offerings begin with Acquia Cloud, the company's platform-as-a-service that provides cloud solutions and development tools. Buytaert said that it includes pre-built testing solutions, an API for creating custom tests, and a tool called Acquia Insight.